The present invention relates to the World Wide Web and more particularly to a system and method for providing and displaying information in a World Wide Web browser.
Over the past few years, there has been an explosive increase in the use of the Internet for communication, data transfer, research and recreation. Businesses, educational institutions, individuals, and governments are beginning to use the Internet for everything from personal communications to mission-critical commercial negotiations and transactions. There is now a staggering array of information and content sources and providers available through the Internet, offering up information such as individual stock and portfolio quotations, sporting news and game/event scores, news updates, electronic mail services, etc.
However, a negative consequence of having so many information sources and providers is that accessing all of these information sources and providers in a simple, efficient and intuitive manner can be a difficult process. For example, if a user wishes to view information from multiple electronic mail accounts, the user will typically have to logon separately to each electronic mail provider to view any updated status information about each account. If one or more electronic mail servers are delayed or down for some reason, the user's access to this information will be severely limited or, at a mini mum, be time consuming. Similarly, if a user wishes to view other types of status updates via their browser software, such as up to date stock quotations and sports scores, the user may have to endure lengthy delays if one or more of the servers providing such information is delayed or down.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to be able to check the status of information from multiple information providers, such as provided by information content servers and electronic mail servers, in one simple and intuitive fashion whereby the user would be able to view information from all the information sources in a single display without having the entire display being compromised by a delay at one or more of the multiple information providers.